Having hit a new milestone birthday, I’ve been reflecting on the previous decades, and asking, “After all this time, have I really learned anything?”

I think I have, and that thing is: the truth is underrated.

My scattered thoughts follow.

• Peer reviewed investigation is expensive, slow, with only the most limited safeguards against all our human foibles. And yet this is the best we’ve got.
• If you think peer review is hard, telling the truth to your friends and loved ones is just as difficult.
• I particularly struggle with this one. White lies and bullshit are so much easier.
• And then there are the lies we tell ourselves.
• As Feynman told us, you are the easiest one to fool, but Nature cannot be fooled.
• Speaking of: the introduction to the Feynman Lectures on Physics briefly touches on the lies we tell undergraduates. Is it better to teach students the abstractions that we know are false, but that are simple to learn?
• If we work from the opposite direction, if we start students off with our best and most truthful theories, the result will be: fewer physicists. Less truth.
• Knowing the truth is, strictly speaking, better than not knowing the truth. However, finding out the truth is often much more expensive than simply borrowing a falsehood that seems to fit the data.
• This is why people can cling to falsehoods for longer than you can remain intellectually solvent.
• What happens as the truth becomes rarer and rarer?
• Does the truth become more valuable, like a rare commodity?
• Does the truth become less valuable, like a node in a shrinking network?
• Does the truth shrivel and degenerate, turn into something like a Veblen good?
• The unhappy answer is, seeking the truth does not always yield profit for you, personally.
• The happy answer is, seeking the truth is an investment in the future. But not always your future.
• The truth is the tree we plant today. It is the sacred inheritance that we all build, and tear down, together.